Robert Thomas Morris

Robert T. Morris, the author of the Internet Worm program, was
convicted of a Federal felony in the case. The law involved was 18 USC
1030 (A)(5)(a), the Computer Crime and Abuse Act of 1986. He was found
guilty in February of 1990 in US District Court in Syracuse, NY.

In May of 1990, he was sentenced -- outside of Federal sentencing
guidelines -- to 3 years of probation, 400 hours of community service,
and $10,050 in fines plus probation costs. His lawyers appealed the
conviction to the Circuit Court of Appeals, and the conviction was
upheld. His lawyers then appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Court
declined to hear the case -- leaving the conviction intact.

For a while, Robert was (allegedly) working as a programmer
(non-security related) for CenterLine Software (makers of CodeCenter,
et. al.). More recently, Robert has been working on his Ph.D. under
the direction of H.T. Kung at Harvard University. He is also involved
with the ViaWeb company: .

To the best of my knowledge, he has not spoken publicly about the
incident, nor has he attempted to work in computer security.

--gene spafford
Feb 1996

Here's a [slightly edited] news article summarizing references to the
Internet Worm:

From: rgasch@nl.oracle.com (Robert Gasch)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Internet Worm SUMMARY (UNIX)
Date: 23 Sep 92 11:33:51 GMT


A while back I requested references regarding papers about the
internet worm of November 88. Here is the promised summary of articles
which I have collected. These seem to be the major reports covering
the incident. There are doubtless a million other newspaper clippings
one could add to this list but I doubt that most of those would be
very informative as the articles below cover the subject in depth.

The number after the authors name indicates the source I
obtained the particular article from. All of these articles are
availible from numerous sources so don't be surprised when you stuble
across these articles somewhere else.

I'd like to apologize that it took me so long to compile this
list but I do not have direct FTP access and have to work via an FTP
server which slows things down. Lastly I'd want to thank all the
people who responded to my query and to all the kind souls that
actually sent me articles.

The archives which I obtained the articles from are a good
place to nose around for other interesting things regarding security
and viruses. I found some worthwhile reading there.

If anybody has any other articles which I did not catch then
please let me know as I'd like to read them myself.


Here's the list:
Eugene Spafford:
The Internet Worm Program: an Analysis (Purdue CS Technical
Report TR-CSD-823) (1)
The Internet Worm Incident (Purdue CS Technical Report
TR-CSD-933) (1)
The Internet Worm: Crisis and Aftermath (2)
ACM, June 1989, vol 32, number 6

Donn Seeley:
A Tour of the Worm (1)
- needs some hacking around before it will print on
a non-laserwriter

Mark Eichin and Jon Rochlins:
With a Microscope and Tweezers: An Analysis of the Internet Virus
of November 1988 (also knows as the MIT paper) (1)

The Cornell Commission (Ted Eisenberg, David Gries and others):
The Computer Worm (3)
Availible from Cornell (call 607-255-3324)

United States Court of Appeals (1)
Document 928 F2D 504 - Court statement on Morris' appeal

Denning
Computers Under Attack: Intruders, Worms and Viruses
Addison Wesley Pub Co Inc. (ISBN: 0-201-53067-8)
I've never seen this one so I can't judge if it's any decent
but I've included it for sake of completeness.



Sources:
(1) - coast.cs.purdue.edu (/pub/doc/morris_worm)
(2) - any good technical library
(3) - call or write cornell technical publications (607-255-3324)